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russia loose nukes impacts – extinction



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russia loose nukes impacts – extinction


Russian loose nukes lead to extinction

Alan Cranston, former US Senator, “Nukes Beget Nukes: Away with Bombs”, November 16th, 1999, http://www.gsinstitute.org/archives/000028.shtml, accessed on June 21, 2011, CJJ



The bomb has been developed further. One super bomb could now let loose more destructive energy than all that has been released from all weapons fired in all wars in all history. The power of self-extinction is now in our uncertain hands. The leaders responsible for America's defense warn that the only significant threat today to the security and survival of the U.S. is nuclear proliferation. Their Alice in Wonderland position seems to be that the danger lies in nations that do not possess nuclear weapons, not in those that do. Actually, nuclear weapons beget nuclear weapons. The threat of a Hitler bomb begot the American bomb. The American arsenal begot the Soviet arsenal. The U.S. and Soviet arsenals led to the British, French and Chinese arsenals. These led to bombs of Israel, India and Pakistan. What next? The U.S. Senate's recent rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Russian Duma's failure to ratify START II, suggest the two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals intend to hang onto them forever. This is a prescription for more begetting. The Non-Proliferation Treaty was a bargain. The 180 nations without nuclear weapons pledged not to acquire them-and they haven't. The five nations that had nuclear weapons when the treaty was negotiated decades ago-China, France, the Soviet Union (Russia), the United Kingdom and the United States-pledged to get rid of them-but they haven't. The 180 are losing patience. Some may withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, advising the U.S. and the other nuclear nations: "If you need these weapons so badly, maybe we need them too." Today's rogue states and terrorists seek the bomb. And there's grave danger that "loose nukes" can be bought or stolen in Russia, where command, control and custody are deteriorating. Russian chaos could cause an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch that could provoke a U.S.-Russian holocaust. By no means immune from error, too, are U.S. missiles and warheads, the computers that direct their use, and the human beings who command the computers. It is more likely now than it was during the more stable days of the Cold War that weapons of mass destruction will be used. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry says, "It isn't a question of whether, but of where and when." Gen. Charles Horner, who commanded Allied Air Forces in the Gulf War, says he expects that a nuclear weapon will be exploded in some city in the next 10 years. Former Ambassador Robert Galluci, who negotiated on nuclear weapons with Iraq and North Korea, agrees and predicts it will be an American city. Galucci described how it could happen:

RUSSIA LOOSE NUKES IMPACTS – PROBABILITY


Nuclear terrorism is the most probable scenario for extinction.

Graham Allison 2004, ( Graham Allison is a director for the belfer center for science and foreign affairs. “Nuclear terrorism: How serious a threat to Russia”, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/660/nuclear_terrorism.html. 6/24/11. google, AW)



Realistically, nuclear terrorists are most likely to use a small weapon stolen from the arsenal of one of the nuclear states, or an elementary nuclear bomb made from stolen HEU or plutonium.  Of particular interest would be the former Soviet arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which was even larger and much more widely dispersed than the strategic nuclear forces. These bombs included suitcase nuclear devices; suitcase backpacks (yadernyi ranets), such as the Army’s RA-155 and Navy’s RA-115-01 (to be used underwater), which weighed as little as 65 pounds and could be detonated by one solider in ten minutes, producing a yield of between 0.5 and 2 kilotons;[14] atomic landmines weighing 200 pounds; air-defense warheads; and 120-pound atomic artillery shells designed to destroy an enemy force at a 200-mile range.[15]  The public museum at Russia’s largest nuclear weapon design center, Chelyabinsk-70, displays what it claims is the world’s smallest nuclear weapon, an artillery shell eighteen inches long and six inches in diameter.[16]   A picture of this mini-nuke, standing next to the largest bomb in history, the Tsar Bomba (“King of Bombs”), a 100-megaton weapon, can be viewed on the Web.[17]  The full extent of the Soviet tactical arsenal, however, remains shrouded in secrecy, particularly the existence and fate of special KGB “suitcase” nuclear weapons.  Furthermore, the security of some tactical nuclear weapons, which are held in about 90 storage sites throughout Russia, remains questionable.[18] National security experts agree that the most likely way terrorists will obtain a nuclear bomb will involve not theft or purchase of a fully operational device, but purchase of fissile material from which they construct their own.  Terrorists would find it easiest to steal fissile material because it is smaller, lighter, more abundant, and less protected than the weapons themselves. With about 100 pounds of HEU, a crude gun-type nuclear device is simple to design, build, and detonate.  In fact, two declassified U.S. government publications based on the work of Manhattan Project scientists and engineers in the 1940s, The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb and Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, offer instruction about how to build such a device.  Furthermore, recent revelations about A. Q. Khan’s nuclear network demonstrated that complete bomb designs are now available for sale on the black market.[23]  An IAEA official who reviewed plans confiscated in Libya remarked to the journalist Seymour Hersh that the design in question was “a sweet little bomb” that would be “too big and too heavy for a Scud, but it’ll go into a family car” -- a “terrorist’s dream.”[24] Supplies of HEU are extensive, and numerous instances of HEU smuggling have been documented.  During the Cold War, the Soviet Unionestablished a vast nuclear enterprise under its Ministry of Atomic Energy that employed more than a million people in ten “closed” cities requiring special entry and exit visas.  The scientists and technicians in these cities designed and built weapons and produced uranium and plutonium not only for weapons but also for the fuel that powered the nation’s fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and its nuclear power plants. U.S.experts have estimated that Russiapossesses over 2 million pounds of weapons-usable material, or enough for more than 80,000 weapons.[25]Yet a dozen years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, much of this vast stockpile remains dangerously insecure. Contrary to the Russian government’s claims, there can be no doubt about the fact that enough nuclear material to build more than 20 nuclear weapons was lost in the transition from the Soviet Union to Russia. Indeed, 1,000 pounds of HEU was purchased by the U.S. government, removed from an unprotected site in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and is now securely stored in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  Moreover, as former CIA director John Deutch testified to Congress in 1998, “It’s not so much that what I know that worries me, as what I know that I don’t know.” 

RUSSIA MOST LIKELY SCENARIO FOR TERRORIST ACQUISITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Jon Wolfstal 2002, ( Jon Wolfstal is a senior fellow at the Carnegie institute, “Nuclear terrorism and warhead control in Russia”. http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=946. 6/24/11. google, AW)



The most likely source from which terrorists might acquire nuclear material or a complete warhead is Russia, which possesses a vast nuclear complex containing hundreds of tons of fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) protected by inadequate or nonexistent security. In January 2001, a bipartisan commission chaired by Howard Baker, former Senate Republican majority leader, and Lloyd Cutler, former Clinton White House counsel, found that “[t]he most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad and citizens at home.”2 More recently, in February 2002 the U.S. intelligence community confirmed to Congress that “weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes. We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude of such thefts.”3 According to Viktor Yerastov, who heads the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s Nuclear Materials Accounting and Control Department, “quite sufficient material to produce an atomic bomb” was stolen from the Chelyabinsk region in 1998.4 Commenting on that theft to The Washington Post, a U.S. official said that, “given the known and suspected capabilities of the Russian mafia, it’s perfectly plausible that al Qaeda would have access to such material.”5 The risk of a complete nuclear device falling into the hands of terrorists or a would-be nuclear-weapon state is a nightmare scenario, but because of gaps in Russian warhead security, it is a possibility. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the Russian warhead-security system “was designed in the Soviet era to protect weapons primarily against a threat from outside the country and may not be sufficient to meet today’s challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group


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